Court Rejects Lido DAO's Immunity Claims, Putting DAOs in the Face of Existing Legal Frameworks

A judge for the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California dismissed Lido DAO's attempt to claim it is not a legal entity and

A judge for the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California has dismissed Lido DAO’s attempt to claim it is not a legal entity and, therefore, immune to lawsuits. The California court ruled that the decentralized autonomous organization was a general partnership, meaning it could be sued.  

Andrew Samuels, a former lawmaker for Lido DAO’s (LDO) governance token, brought the case forward. Last December, Samuels filed a lawsuit alleging that the falling value of the token had caused massive financial losses. Lido DAO accused him of violating federal securities laws by not registering the LDO token as a security.  

The Court has rejected Lido DAO’s immunity claims, stating that decentralized governance structures don’t mean entities are exempt from regulatory compliance. The ruling also follows increasing regulatory scrutiny of decentralized finance (DeFi) organizations.  

Samuels’ legal team also pointed to centralized control within Lido DAO, saying that founders and early investors control 64 percent of LDO tokens. They argued that such a concentration of ownership entailed unfair influence over governance decisions.  

The lawsuit also alleges that Lido DAO deliberately structured itself to shield it from legal scrutiny while allowing institutional investors, including Paradigm, Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z, and Dragonfly Digital Management, to make money selling unregistered securities. The Court concluded that such investors may well have taken an active part in the governance and operations of Lido DAO by being liable alongside the DAO.  

The Court also noted that Lido DAO ran promotional activities, including social media campaigns amplifying LDO purchases and facilitating token listings on decentralized exchanges. However, the Court ruled that Samuels’ purchase of his tokens on secondary markets was not enough to break the Lido DAO’s persuading, which helped cost him, resulting in him receiving a large share of the tokens exchanged in the crime.  

According to DefiLlama, Lido DAO, one of the most significant liquid staking protocols in the DeFi ecosystem, manages over $30B in assets. It is now under ramped-up scrutiny. This ruling puts DAOs in the face of their existing legal frameworks and will have broader implications for decentralized organizations.